Labyrinth to map out Irish EU Presidency website

The Department of Foreign Affairs has selected Esat BT to design, build and manage Ireland’s EU Presidency website, as reported by siliconrepublic.com last week. Labyrinth, the web solutions division of Esat BT, secured the contract in a highly competitive tender involving 28 companies.

Commenting on the tender, Joe Nugent, head of information and communications technology, at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said: “Our main vehicle for communication during the EU Presidency will be our website – we estimate an average of 20,000 unique visits per day and 40,000 at peak times. Hence, it was essential that we partnered with a company that could deliver a high-quality product, on time and on budget. From that perspective, Labyrinth was the clear winner.”

Bill Murphy, CEO of Esat BT, added: “It’s a great endorsement of our capability to have been selected to design, build and project-manage this mission-critical website. With as many as 15 million visits expected during the presidency, this will be one of the busiest Irish websites ever.”

Ireland will hold the Presidency of the European Union for the first six months of 2004. The website address www.eu2004.ie currently links to the Department of Foreign Affairs and will go live once Ireland’s EU Presidency is enacted in January. The site will have an estimated 20,000 pages of content, will be an invaluable source of information for member states, media, delegates and the general public. Key features include webcasts, online accreditation for events, email and short messaging service news alerts. The website will be multilingual and will be fully accessible to people of all abilities.

Labyrinth will oversee the entire project, from designing and building the website to programme-managing the hosting, translation and web streaming components. The Local Government Computer Services Board (LGCSB) will host the site, eTraining will publish and translate content, and Servecast will provide web streaming services. All content will be managed using Labyrinth’s iPublish content management system.